The mission of the Partners in Health and Housing Prevention Research Center (PHH-PRC) at Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) is to improve the health and well being of public housing residents. To accomplish this, BUSPH has partnered with the Boston Housing Authority (BHA), the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC) and the Community Committee for Health Promotion (CCHP), a community-based organization of public housing residents and advocates. This partnership has trained public housing residents, known as Resident Health Advocates (RHAs), in all 24 BHA family developments. The goals of the PHH-PRC are: 1) to build, improve and expand the capacity of the PHH-PRC infrastructure to support PHH-PRC activities;2) to assess the public health concerns and needs of public housing residents;3) to design and perform prevention research in the public housing setting;4) to identify and educate community leaders among residents of public housing about ways to improve the health of residents;5) to create practice opportunities in Boston public housing developments for public health students;6) to expand an effective partnership among BUSPH,-BHA and BPHC to address the public health needs of public housing residents;7) to sustain successful prevention programs for public housing residents through integration into ongoing programs of partner agencies;8) to communicate and disseminate PHH- PRC findings;and 9) to document PHH-PRC successes, identify areas where improvement is needed, and revise objectives to optimize potential for realizing PHH-PRC goals and National PRC Goals. The PHH-PRC partners work together to develop all research projects. The proposed PHH-PRC Core Research project will examine the effectiveness of a program of RHA-assisted navigation of public housing residents into disease treatment and health promotion programs. Public housing residents have lower health status than the general population and are also more likely to be members of racial, ethnic and socioeconomic minorities. Thus, the activities proposed for the PHH-PRC address the Healthy People 2010 goals of increasing health status and of reducing health disparities.
The Partners in Health and Housing Prevention Research Center seeks to improve the health and well-being of public housing residents. We have trained public housing residents to be Resident Health Advocates (RHAs) and we are proposing to study whether RHAs can significantly increase the participation of public housing residents in ongoing disease prevention and health promotion programs.
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